1. Field
The following description relates to a cellular system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for dynamically configuring a multicast/broadcast service (hereinafter, referred to as “MBS”) zone using neighboring base stations positioned near terminals positioned in a boundary area of a cell.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a wireless communication system provides the Internet, Voice over IP (VoIP), non real-time streaming service, Mobile-WiMAX or WiBro, and multicast/broadcast service (MBS) as major services.
Among the services provided by the wireless communication system, the MBS has recently been attracting attention as a new service. The MBS is next generation mobile television (TV) technology which can receive broadcasting using a wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) (asynchronous third generation mobile communication) communication network. This is unlike other mobile TV technologies such as digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB), digital video broadcast-handheld (DVB-H), and the like which separately require broadcast frequencies in addition to communication frequencies. And, the MBS provides video services such as news, drama, and sports, and data service such as radio music broadcasting and real-time traffic information.
Also, the MBS can concurrently transmit various channels of high-quality video and audio with high data rates using a macro diversity technique.
However, in the conventional MBS, the MBS zone is set by an MBS management device. For this, the MBS management device receives position information of a terminal positioned in a cell managed by a base station within a first tier MBS zone from the base station, determines whether the terminal is positioned in a boundary area of the cell, and sets an MBS zone of the terminal to include a base station of the neighboring cell in the boundary area of the cell when the terminal is positioned in the boundary area of the cell.
Specifically, the base station periodically transmits, to the MBS management device, position information of all terminals which are currently positioned in the cell. In this instance, the base station also transmits position information of terminals which are not positioned in the boundary area of the cell to the MBS management device, but the position information of the terminals which are not positioned in the boundary area of the cell is unnecessary information.
Accordingly, resources are wasted in transmitting unnecessary information to the MBS management device.
Also, interference signals from a neighboring cell as well as position information of a corresponding terminal are not taken into account, so that a method of determining the closest base station to the terminal positioned in the boundary area of the cell to thereby configure the MBS zone is not clear.